Communications
136 THE COMMONWEAL June 4, 1930 COMMUNICATIONS A CLOUD FROM CANADA Toronto, Can. TO the Editor:—It is difficult (impossible for a Canadian) to conceive of a piece of writing calculated to...
...TO the Editor:—Mr...
...TO the Editor:—It is difficult (impossible for a Canadian) to conceive of a piece of writing calculated to give a more completely untrue impression than that which Mr...
...The Anglo-Saxons have had their day...
...A first referendum resulted in the defeat of the antiprohibition forces...
...THE NAVAL CONFERENCE Dorchester, Mass...
...Bryan upheld the affirmative of the proposition that "Catholicism is more dangerous to the United States than Communism" and this position, it is suggested, may have been the basis for the charge that he was anti-Catholic...
...Dan Bride...
...Bryan—on the contrary, clergy and laity were his most loyal supporters in the campaign of 1896...
...For these and other reasons I may positively state that Mr...
...Certainly, the name "Haughwout" does not suggest anything human, rather it makes one think of robots and the like...
...He thinks that the first group is nearer God than the second, and that it is therefore more decent, tolerant, just and honest...
...was closely associated with him when Secretary of State...
...slept in the same tent with him during the SpanishAmerican War and was constantly at his bedside during his illness at my home in 1919...
...President Hoover estimates our savings at $1,000,000,000, which, if used to put the jobless to work, might offset in part the efforts of the "Godless" to stir up discontent...
...In the course of the review, reference is made to one of the debates at Whipple Academy in which Mr...
...Following this the anti-Catholic propaganda was launched and sedulously spread in all large Catholic centres...
...In speeches on the subject, occasionally, a speaker might say, "If the people will drink, the government might as well get the profit as the bootlegger...
...Obviously, parities big have begotten parities little, and odorous comparisons have been uncorked, to the dismay of the bigwigs and the anger of the small ones...
...To say that such a tendency exists and is a danger to Church and state in America is surely not "flying in the face of facts" unless in the meaning that one is facing that fact and urging others to face it as American citizens (not as "new America" or as "old America") and as Catholics (not as a racial federation or as a political party...
...Prohibition had the unanimous support of all Protestant churches, except, perhaps, the Anglican (Episcopalian...
...I AO the Editor:—A self-imposed pledge to refrain from •*• writing about the London naval conference should not prevent the making of a few comments, now that its materialistic high priests have performed their rites...
...This good Brother McCarthy, it would seem, just dotes on Methodists, Baptists and "Haughwoutites" but hates atheists, agnostics and "Menckenites...
...But taking the name to be the symbol of a real person, I wonder what your esteemed contributor, Denis A. McCarthy, of Boston, thinks of the affair...
...Perhaps, the most interesting part of the article was to find an American sending Benedict Arnold to Canada in the year 1777...
...Immediately after the war, bootlegging, pocket flasks, crime and debauchery generally prevailed in the dry provinces to an extent previously unheard of in this usually law-abiding country...
...It is equally novel to be told that Canada was in any sort of "financial decay...
...There are Americans left, and Catholics among them, who June 4, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 137 believe that the American experiment of a new society and in it a new government as it was set up and intended to function is the best yet devised for the purposes of Church and state provided it be based on the utmost development of the individual citizen...
...Such statements were very rare, and I can assure you that in Canada the repeal of prohibition legislation came almost completely as the conclusion of a moral issue...
...It is news that Prince Edward Island "is outside the tourist track...
...Bryan when he first came to Congress in 1891...
...The frailties in that part of our whole economic organization, to my way of thinking, present the gravest business problem now before the country...
...As a constant reader and admirer of your editorial pages, I was naturally a bit puzzled by this reference, especially by the phrase "production economics...
...Specifically with reference to your impression that I have been stressing the introduction of more machine production efficiency, I am sure you will be interested in certain passages in my radio talks of January 26 and February 9, wherein I tried to point out precisely these fields of technological employment to which you have reference...
...Obviously, the attempt to fool the "Latin mind" has failed...
...Gerald Kelly...
...It is true that we were in a war to an extent which you do not know, and that war obligations made the period of reconstruction difficult...
...Julius Klein...
...This he indignantly denounced and forcefully advised the responsible parties of his position on the liquor question...
...was a member of his family for eight years at Lincoln, Nebraska...
...In this connection it is interesting to recall that while living in his home at Lincoln, knowing me to be a Catholic, Mr...
...My chief offense, apparently, lay in suggesting that racial antagonism is not a monopoly of the "older stratum" of American citizenship, but is at least equally active among new citizens...
...This dangerous rift in our citizenship is partly due to the neglect of American history and Catholic history in our schools...
...Bryan, himself, he said on one occasion: "I cannot understand why you are not a Catholic, as you have a more thorough knowledge of that faith than any ecclesiast I have met in or out of college," to which Mr...
...Now, having ruminated much over the weird item, may I take a few of your lines to ululate for the benefit of your patient readers...
...Bryan was not simply tolerant but constantly solicitous that I should feel no restraint or embarrassment, and not only saw to it that the Friday menu should include some variety of fish, but was careful to inform himself as to the fast days in the Catholic calendar...
...American figures show that liquor from Canada constitutes only about 2 percent of the liquor consumed in your country...
...McCarthy and his associates would prove it (personally I believe him totally wrong in the matter) any more than I know how that other neo-Catholic maestro, "Colonel" Callahan, would prove his trick theories, but I do feel that, if, at the same instant, Molto Reverendo Lefferd M. A. Haughwout, D.D., and Very Irreverent H. L. Mencken were to die, a jury made up of Michael and Gabriel and Raphael and Uriel, and of Mary Magdalen and Bridget of Sweden and Bridget of Ireland and Mother Machree, and of Patrick and Kevin and Malachi and the penitent thief would advise the Great Judge, without leaving the box, to let old Mencken in and put old Haughwout out...
...That is perfectly possible and if it were a Catholic ideal it would be a noble ambition...
...Commenting on something published recently by Hugh Walpole, Father Gillis says: "The Roman had his day, so Divine Providence sent in some new blood that was to achieve a higher civilization than that of Rome...
...Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln were each the victim of a malignant criticism, for they too, sought the welfare of the masses, which should be the great objective of a true democracy...
...W. A. Bixel...
...So in America...
...On his general attitude toward the Catholic Church, it is interesting to note the opinion of so eminent a churchman as Father Nugent, pastor of the cathedral at Lincoln, who said to this writer that he "had never met a man who was so well read in Catholic doctrine" and to Mr...
...They were the old America, which as Mr...
...If Canada is an example of "a land driven by financial decay to repudiate its antiliquor legislation," it is at least strange that Parliament in its present session, at the request of the United States, passed legislation refusing customs clearances to shipments of liquor to the United States, thereby voluntarily incurring a yearly loss of revenue of $12,000,000: this, too, at a time when American tariff legislation was demonstrating very clearly the altruism existing in United States politics...
...We might at least expect accuracy when dealing with American history...
...When the nations of the earth come to regard war less as an evil in itself, and more as a punishment of national wrongdoing, that attitude of humility will point the way to peace...
...Bryan was not an enemy of the Catholic faith nor was the Church an enemy of Mr...
...It may well be the greatest culture of all...
...I don't know how Mr...
...If moneygrabbing Canada is ready to lose $12,000,000 yearly to help stop 2 percent of your drinking, one wonders how much your government should spend to enforce your own laws...
...Concluding, may I venture the opinion that the biography of Hibben and Werner in Liberty as well as others more friendly in tone, will be of great future value, for the latter will serve to emphasize the bitterness of his critics, a bitterness that cannot be justified and so will the more effectively illumine his nobility of soul and disclose his utter disregard for a criticism that was captious and wholly undeserved...
...Subsequently there were two general elections with prohibition the chief issue...
...I believe that to be a dangerous situation from the point of view of religion and of citizenship and I believe it to be totally unnecessary...
...Bryan's Favorite Brand...
...The fact into the face of which I flew (and still fly) is that we have today a racially divided citizenship and that we are permitting and even encouraging the division to crystallize around the Catholic Church...
...THE PEERLESS LEADER Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—A biographical sketch of William Jennings Bryan, under the caption, The Peerless Leader, from the pen of Paxton Hibben, was made the subject of a review by John A. Ryan which appeared in The Commonweal in the issue of January 15, last...
...MAY-DAY MATTERS Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—I was much interested in your editorial in The Commonweal for April 30, wherein you referred to "a kind of production economics doled out during recent years" by myself and others...
...Bryan was accustomed to view the affairs of the world through the crystal lens of human betterment, and to him, the narrow, selfish and purely egoistic point of view could and did make no appeal...
...In all this agitation and voting, the economic argument was not advanced...
...Walpole says, is disappearing...
...As a matter of fact, if you will examine a few recent talks of mine, you will discover that I am constantly pounding away on the necessity of more "distribution" economies...
...Christopher I. FitzGerald...
...It is interesting to note that the "fact" is confirmed by Reverend James M. Gillis, C.S.P., in his weekly column in the Catholic Bulletin...
...Bryan replied, "I could not reach the atheist through the Church, they do not attend church...
...They do not want a United States or "a new culture" based upon racial blocs nor upon the Catholic Church as a racial, nationalistic sect...
...William Franklin Sands...
...That astute mind refuses to admit that the Christmas message of the angels was delivered in the English language...
...It is impossible to deal in detail with Mr...
...THE HAYES-MOON HISTORY Los Angeles, Calif...
...The new America is in the hands of the 'children of the immigrants of the last fifty years.' Just now many of them, as an English observer notices are 'crude, ill disciplined, ignorant and resentful of law and order.' But they will discipline themselves and will produce a culture of their own, here on our soil...
...As concerns this, may I say that it was my good fortune to know Mr...
...Seitz labored to produce in the article, A Cloud from Canada, which appeared in your issue of March 5. Prohibition came to Canada as part of war hysteria...
...I wonder first of all if Brisbane isn't just spoofing his yokel devotees out here where the ultimate West meets the ultramarine...
...Will it be so used...
...In 1897 the liquor interests sought to secure his indorsement for certain leading brands, going so far as to print labels with his picture over the words "Mr...
...Seitz's article...
...Or that, seeing in "the children of the immigrants" a "tool of the political intriguers of Rome" they should turn their "decadent" resentment to the Catholic religion...
...FLYING IN THE FACE OF FACTS" Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:—During the last presidential campaign I was taken to task by a Catholic editor rather severely for "flying in the face of facts" when I suggested that the alarming growth of anti-Catholicism in the United States is not religious in its essence, but racial, and that it is not one-sided...
...Now we know the output—it may be years before we learn the outcome—of this conference...
...Brisbane in this morning's Today tells us that Reverend Lefferd M. A. Haughwout objected to the Catholic tone of the book, Modern History, by Professors Hayes and Moon, and that the New York Board of Education dropped the book from their list of textbooks...
...Obviously, its real object has been achieved, namely, the cutting down of naval expenditures...
...The movement for repeal gathered force in Ontario very slowly...
...Is it surprising, however, that the majority of "decadent" American citizens who, according to Father Gillis "have had their day" and upon whom, whether they want it or not "the children of the immigrants of the last fifty years" are about to superimpose "a culture of their own" should make a last feeble attempt to go on living...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 5
